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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26913433">The Art of Grafting</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506'>Project0506</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Soft Wars [122]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Family Feels, Gen, Grizzer outranks everyone, gen - Freeform</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 02:02:14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,657</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26913433</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Hound has some reservations.  Fox... helps.  Eventually.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Soft Wars [122]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>380</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Art of Grafting</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Hound tracks his progress by sound. It’s one of those things he’s actually good at: he can, even when the Commander has the occasional desire to be quiet about things. Today though, the procession of crashes and the litany of swearing shooting up the duracrete sidewalls sort of say he probably isn’t trying. Or at least not very hard. Life, the Commander likes to pretend, forces him to curse. No choice about it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It was good while it lasted, Hound thinks. Or. Not <em>good</em>. Serviceable.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There’s kind of a dearth of discreet corners in the Senate building. The scant few find themselves occupied by any host of indiscretions and any blend of beings who really ought not. Side corridors echo whispers, overhangs shield slips of hands, cubbies conceal unlabeled credit chits for favors unspecified. The spot Hound’s discovered sits too far exposed for delicate senatorial sensibilities, too far over the edge of the tertiary spire for delicate senatorial stomachs. Too much of a climb to bother with, for most, though Hound’s never minded it much and Grizzer’s always been content enough to harness to his back for the trek. Barely even throws his balance off.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>This spot, it gets a little wet in the infrequent rain, a little hot in the too-frequent sun, a little loud in the constant scream of traffic only handfuls of meters below his boots. So. It’s not <em>great</em> but it was … enough.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Sufficient.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hound doesn’t really like that word much.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“… but <em>no</em>, he has to pick the most fucking obnoxious hole in the most fucking obnoxious exterior wall in the entire Senate building because Force fucking forbid he makes anything easy. Oh no, never. Pain in my shebs, every damn one of them. I’m promoting Grizzer, he’s my new SiC. Fuck vode. Every one of you live to make me gray.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Grizzer can’t use a switchboard.” The swearing pauses. The Commander is very, very good at projecting judgment, Hound thinks, even when you can’t see him. Maybe especially then. He shuffles a little, awkward. He doesn’t look down over the side. “He doesn’t have thumbs.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Demoted,” Commander Fox barks. “Effective yesterday. You can be Grizzer’s admin.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Still better than cell duty. Unlike drunks, Grizzer only pees where he’s supposed to.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Grizzer wriggles himself right up to the edge and grins a great big soppy massiff smile down. His dorsal spines twitch in glee because no matter how the Commander grouses, he’s still one of Grizzer’s People. And Grizzer is all primed in wait for one of his People to come close enough to be loudly, viciously snuggled.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“How the fuck did you get up there with a damn massiff?”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I rucked him. There’s footholds.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“There are fucking dimples in this wall LT. There are no footholds.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“If you put your foot in it, it’s a foothold.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Judgment, thick and heavy. Hound isn’t like Stone, who purposefully does things just because the Commander’s annoyance not-so-secretly amuses him, or like Thire who’s made petty revenge an art. He won’t deny he finds it a little funny though.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’m promoting the caff dispenser. It’s the only thing in my life that hasn’t pissed me off today,” Commander Fox finally declares. He probably will too. No one does spite like the Commander.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He gripes and grouses the entire climb up, spits invective at every stone between him and the top and quite a few that are just sitting there minding their own duracretey business. And yet when the Commander pulls himself over the lip every motion seems entirely effortless. One handed, nearly, what with needing to shove Grizzer’s snout away enough to get past. His boots don’t slip once the entire way, his grip is never less than sure.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Commander Fox is the type they call talented, honest. A genius. In just about everything too, from combat to finance to tactics to maneuvering politicians around so normal folks can do their jobs. Hound used to find himself jealous of a tat like that. Still does, sometimes, even though he knows he’s one of the luckier ones all told.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Pain in the bottom center of my left fucking cheek,” the Commander complains as though he’d had any trouble at all. He’s tracked Hound down faster than Thire ever has, climbed after him farther than Thorn ever would. And grumbled the whole way more than Stone ever could <em>imagine</em>. Hound is impressed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Commander Fox drops to his side with an all too theatrical grunt, one then another as Grizzer eagerly inserts himself across both their laps.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You are karking around on my last fucking synapse,” he snarls and scratches at the base of Grizzer’s jaw pins just the way he likes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He wonders why no one but Blockade, Bral Squad and Hound ever even pretends he’s as tough as he sounds. Hound points his smile out at the chrome-dotted horizon, so the Commander can pretend not to see it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s that lull after midday. Most of the important people have already left for lush apartments thrust up into the sky above them. All the people who actually work won’t leave for hours yet. Taxis idle little dots of yellows and reds scant speeder-lengthaway from no-parking zones in hopes of luck, not yet to the point of throwing words and hypothetical elbows in contest. Heat’s sunk low over the district and lingers in hazes off of tranpariplast windows.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Grizzer’s anterior spike thumps rhythmically against his thigh. The massiff melts languid in the heated, unnatural noise.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For all the racket, there aren’t really bugs on Coruscant. None of the proper buzzing kind. Lots of scuttlers that get into rations and chew holes in blacks, but nothing that would be droning in the sunlight. Kamino was the same: sea bugs don’t buzz, just bite.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Funny how that’s one of the only things Hound misses from Before. He doesn’t miss any of the Places, of course. They weren’t the type of places you miss. But he does miss that sleep when you’re worn so far down there’s nothing to do but listen to local critters going about their business until the black finds you.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Stone’s turning over the whole damn building looking for you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>There’s not a lot of space in the hideaway Hound’s claimed. It’s a remnant from one or another of a thousand million repairs and refurnishings. A redesign that bent a room one way and forced edges up against the way it sat before. The whole thing’s less than a man deep, the hang inches longer than the seat, and the both of them about half again as wide. About enough space for a man and maybe a massiff to stretch out, if neither of them are much given to thrashing.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Tiny, that space is. It’s the reason Hound tends to leave a lot of stuff down below when he comes up here.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Like his comm, with its tracker.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Stone’s probably doing a whole lot more than turning over the building, honest. Thire and Thorn too, but Stone’ll be loudest about it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Sorry.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He knows it’s the wrong answer even before the Commander’s nose wrinkles in aborted glare. They wait, silent. The Commander hunts down the words he needs; Hound doesn’t bother. They never end up right, anyway.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He feels bad though, sometimes. Bral Squad never really meant to make it hard for the Commander to talk to them. But the battlesign they came up with to reach the cadet they were saddled with, well. It tends to exclude folks.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thire says it isn’t Hound’s fault. Thire doesn’t lie much, and when he does it’s usually to spare folks’ feelings.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I want to say you’ll regret missing it. But people telling me how I will and should feel always pisses me off, so I won’t. What I’m going to say is you <em>might</em> regret missing it. And if you think there’s a chance-”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I won’t.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Commander chokes back something part sigh, part snarl and yeah. Thire’s lying when he says it isn’t Hound’s fault the Commander struggles to talk to them. Hound doesn’t know if he’s just lying to Hound, or if he’s managed to fool himself and the Squad in the meanwhile.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Signboards blare in neon technicolor, slowly inching their way to unignorable in the fading daylight, leisurely insisting on how necessary what they’re hawking is. Hound doesn’t know where the places they show are, since none of them are probably where vode are deployed anyway. Doesn’t really know what folks would do there, on beaches or snowy mountains, for an entire tenday. He’s never seen most of of the gadgets and gizmos they say he should be wanting, doesn’t know what a lot of it even is. And yet he gets by just fine. He’s got boots and a bed and food when he wants it, doesn’t seem normal to want more than what you need to make do.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Seems a waste to Hound, all those Things.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Spotlights under the signs start to glow. It’s almost 1800 hours, by the length of shadows and the slow march of automatic light sensors along the Senate breezeway. Launch won’t be long now. Stone’ll give up looking soon. It’ll be more important for the Squad to go see their brother off than it will for him to keep trying to hunt Hound. He just has to wait.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He’s good at that, too: waiting. One or two of the trainers used to mutter that he’d have made a good tracker. Too bad that wasn’t the kind of thing they wanted.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It’s different.” The Commander shifts beside him in surprise and Grizzer grumbles displeasure. Hound shrugs, scratches at Grizzer’s spine roots until he subsides. He knows the Commander’s learned that he doesn’t start conversation. But evening’s dawning over Hound’s spot far too many stories above the ground, where the Commander climbed up just to talk. The least he deserves is Hound trying.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>That’s one more thing he’s good at. Trying. Just a shame he never managed more than Sufficient.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It’s different from you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Guard Command all know about Commander Neyo and the hole in Commander Fox’s squad that never healed.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“How’s it different.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It isn’t a question, it’s a statement of disbelief.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Faie and me aren’t brothers.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It’s funny, Hound thinks, that this might be the first time he’s ever said it. Stone would rage, if he’d heard. Thire wouldn’t, but he’d hurt and Hound never means to do that.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Thorn would be understanding. That’s the worst of it.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It’s never really right, when they try to. Combine us.” <em>That</em> isn’t the right word either and the Commander doesn’t know him well enough to guess at what he’s trying to mean. Hound flicks through signs, Extra, Overflow, More-than-needed but these are Bral signs. Commander can’t read them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>He tries. It isn’t his fault.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“If you have a problem with him, don’t you think you’d want to sort that shit out now before he ships out?” Before it’s too late, the Commander means. The Blockade has loomed omnipresent in Bral Squad’s communications for days. The Galaxy’s kind of disgusting in general right now, but beyond the Blockade is a special sort. They can’t know if they’ll see him again, won’t know if they’ll ever be able to even talk once he goes.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The irony isn’t lost on Hound.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I don’t. He’s fine.” Hound isn’t even really jealous of him any more. “But they deserve the chance to say goodbye. Without. Complications.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Without you.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“They’re his family, they should see him off.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“And you think you being there will fuck that up.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Not everyone was as strong as Alpha 6.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>83 would never say it. Never ever: not now, not back then. But the reason he would never say it is because he thinks it wouldn’t be good for Hound to hear it, not because he doesn’t think it. Listening to what isn’t said, seeing what is hidden, waiting for the right moment, those are the things Hound is good at, what he was trained for until they found he couldn’t ever manage to be more than just Sufficient.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Alpha 6 was offered a replacement, and legends are whispered of how he ripped at the ones who’d dared.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>83 was given a replacement and didn’t have the brass to say he didn’t want one.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hound shrugs. Grizzer twitches and falls still. The Commander waits.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Very few can out-wait Hound. He only really knows two. Commander Fox isn’t one of them.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“Sometimes you are a fucking meatbread, trooper.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Commander Fox also isn’t one to play with words. Hound really likes that about him.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“CT squads have 5 of you assholes and they somehow manage just fine.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“That’s different-”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“It isn’t. Stop being a fucking martyr. Your squad has five vode. I know four of them personally and three are just fucking peachy with that and the fourth <em>wants it</em> but is up a fucking roof brooding.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>People say Hound is hard to read. Not the Squad, or the Commander or Blockade. But just… people. Hound’s never thought so. He’d always thought he was really obvious, that one stocky cadet trotting after Bral Squad, eagerly stealing up all the affection they couldn’t give their missing brother. Good to know he was right.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The Commander flicks the very edge of his nail against the very tip of Hound’s ear. It stings like a bug bite and grabs attention just as quick.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I haven’t met Faie,” he says and it’s because Hound is good at listening that he hears the way Commander Fox’s voice threatens to thicken, the way he wrestles composure forward so cleanly you might never have known it wavered. “But I’d be willing to bet my entire fucking caff stash that he’s wanting for family too. And is just as shit as you are about saying it.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hound won’t accuse the Commander of projecting. He never uses words intentionally to hurt.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You don’t have to believe me. But there’s a chance I’m right and you owe it to yourself to find out.” When Hound looks at Commander Fox he isn’t looking back, but his face is set for war. <em>He</em> knows how to find words to heave like a weapon. “You owe it to Bral. And Faie, before he’s gone again.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“That,” Hound breathes, “wasn’t kind.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“If you wanted kind you’d have gone to Thire.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For the first time Hound is aware of the Commander’s shoulder at his. Funny. It’s always been Hound’s job to be the solid one. Even if that really wasn’t one of the things he was good at.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hound ducks his head. Grizzer kicks. Commander Fox’s hand sits grounding on the back of Hound’s neck.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hound swallows. “I don’t know how to talk to him.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“And you’re never gonna find out from the awning.” He’s right and he knows he is. He must have been a terror as a cadet.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hound nods. The Commander’s face was made for smug.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’ll give you another ten minutes to wrap up the sulk. If you take longer than that, I’m going to have to borrow a jetpack to get you to the hanger on time and if I have to owe that little blond shit anything I’m taking it out of your backside.”</p>
<p> </p><hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>“Well would you look what the loth-cat dug up.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>It says something that Faie notices him first. That it was Faie’s eyes that were scanning the dock even while half turned towards his brothers. Three heads shoot up in varying degrees of excitement.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“You’re late,” Stone bellows but he’s grinning. Hound shrugs. Thire thumps his shoulder. Thorn looks proud and that coats like chocolate in Hound’s stomach.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Faie smirks, predator-slick. “Thought I was going to have to hire someone to babysit these idiots for me.”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>“I’ve got it,” Hound says, just under Stone and Thire’s varying volumes of protest.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Hound’s good at noticing. He’s not imagining the relief to Faie’s stance. When he bumps his shoulder, Faie doesn’t pull away.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Someone ask for Hound feels?  No?  Just me?</p></blockquote><div class="children module" id="children">
  <b class="heading">Works inspired by this one:</b>
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        <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29139192">the methods of linguistics</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ro29/pseuds/Ro29">Ro29</a>
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</div></div></div>
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